Talk:Hamilton's equations

There is also Hamilton's Equations Matt 01:29, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

merge with Hamilton's Equations and then maybe merge with Hamiltonian mechanics as a bridge to advanced hamiltonians--andrej.westermann 06:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Problems
The following sentence fragment under "More precisely" isn't even grammatically correct. However, I don't know what it was trying to say, so I can't fix it.

"and precise the domain of values the parameter t (the "time") varies in." hkyriazi 21:49, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed mergeto Hamiltonian mechanics
As already suggested here by andrej.westermann

See discussion at Talk:Hamiltonian mechanics

-- Jheald 14:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

interpretive error
Under the section titled "basic physical interpretation" the following statement is made...

"The most simple interpretation of the equations is as follows: The Hamiltonian H represents the energy of the physical system, which is the sum of kinetic and potential energy, traditionally denoted T resp. V:"

This is not entirely correct. The Hamiltonian only represents the total energy of the system under very specific conditions, mainly...

1) The kinetic energy is a homogeneous quadratic function of the generalized velocities used to describe the system.

2) The potential energy does not depend on the generalized velocities.

I understand that the author is giving a simple interpretation, but the unwary reader might take this as being true always. I reccomend the following revision...

"Under the proper conditions (usualy characterized by a simple system) these equations can be interpreted as follows: The Hamiltonian H represents the energy of the physical system, which is the sum of kinetic and potential energy, traditionally denoted T resp. V:"

(Tsadkiel 17:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC))